Egypt, the people of Egypt, the governors, politicians, and both the military and the civil bureaucracy of Egypt should read about the recent history of Turkey, and must certainly take into consideration the experiences Turkey has had during its recent history.

We have suffered great hardships on the way to democracy.

We have experienced heavy losses, and paid heavy prices on the way to democracy.

…

Without exception, each military coup has caused Turkey to lose decades.

Each military coup has paralyzed the economy of Turkey, and wasted Turkey’s assets.

Each military coup has caused the country, the nation, and especially the youth, to pay heavy prices.

The dates May 27, March 12, September 12th, and February 28, have thus been recorded in the memory of the Turkish people as the darkest, the most sinister, and the most unfortunate dates in the history of Turkey.

The leading actors of these coups have been convicted in the consciences of the people.

With the constitutional amendment we passed in 2010, we have enabled those who interfere in democracy to be tried.

Thus, the leaders of these coups have appeared in court, and have been asked for explanation of their deeds.

…

Egypt, the Egyptian people, especially those who have launched and supported the coup in Egypt, should learn about these experiences and facts related, and take lessons from them.

See, I underline this:

No matter in which corner of the world, and no matter against which government that has come to power through elections they are launched, coups are evil. The target of coups is the people. The target of coups is the future, and the democracy.

We expect everyone to express this with candor, courage, and sincerity.

No coup can be democratic.

Some people appear and utter statements which begin with the expression "Coups are evil, but…."

No but, no however, no nevertheless. Coups are evil.

We would still think that coups are evil, even if it had not happened in Egypt, and it had happened in another country.

We would still think that coups are evil, even if it had not been launched against Mursi, but against those in the opposition.

I especially would like to address the Western countries, those who use statements which begin with "however", or "but" in their speeches related to the incidents that have been happening in Egypt, those who wish to find excuses to legitimize the coup, or those who watch the coup silently can never answer to either their consciences, or to their people, or history.

Especially the European Union, by not reacting appropriately against the coup, and by not even acknowledging that what is happening in Egypt is a coup, has once again disregarded their own principles.

Democracy does not accept double standard.

…

The political parties appear before the nation with their planned agenda and if they can win the majority of the votes, then they implement their agenda.

But if they fail, then there is a term for a government to remain in power and there is a fixed time for elections, thus the ballot is put in front of the nation and the nation does what is required.

Those who fail and lose in the elections review themselves, review their agendas, their discourse and try to win the approval of the nation in the next elections.

…

Of course democracy is a regime which guarantees the rights of the minority but the name of an order in which the minority grabs the right to rule is not democracy.

We do not want that Egypt experience such a situation lack of principle at all just at the bottom of the ladder.

Egypt is Turkey's brother and the people of Egypt is our brothers and sisters.

We treat the whole Egyptian people equally and we care the well-being of the whole Egypt as much as our well-being.

We supported the January 25 Revolution most sincerely on behalf of the Egyptian people. We rejoiced just like all Egyptians when Egypt got rid of dictatorship.

However, we do not want to see that Egypt goes back to the times before the January 25Revolution at all.

We seriously feel bad if the accomplishments of January 25 Revolution are lost.

We hope that violence, conflicts and chaos never reign in Egypt.

And again, looking at the bitter memories of Turkey, it should be realized that arresting the leaders through a coup who came to power by elections in Egypt will cause serious traumas in the future.

I want to stress that arbitrary arrests and prosecution of the elected are very concerning.

We hope that the democratic rules in Egypt will immediately step in and all sides take part in the election and that the will of nation will be restored by elections.

As the Egyptians know very well, any will which is not based on people is a dictatorship.

We hope that a healthy atmosphere will prevail in which the elected will leave throughelections in Egypt.

I want to reiterate: no matter where or against whom, coups are damaging and inhuman, also an enemy of the people, national will and democracy.

I invite the whole world to have a moral and sincere standing against the coups and I would like to deliver our sincere regards for the Egyptian people who are Turkey's brothers wishing that they find peace soon.

The political rumour mill is in overdrive again and the grapevines are abundant with all sorts of theories. Words like ‘hidden hands’, ‘UMNO plot’, ‘sandiwara’ and even ‘Salah Anwar lagi’ are being touted and bandied liberally in every coffee shop and cafe throughout the country.

One thing is for sure – Taib has not spoken a single word. Very smart of him. This intensifies the mystery surrounding the very sudden and unexpected move by MACC to investigate him. But the question on everyone’s lips is WHY?

Now let’s look at this very interesting development chronologically and logically.

FACT: MACC made its announcement last week, coincidentally just after Najib had flown off on an overseas tour.

QUESTION: Who gave MACC the nod and green-light to suddenly announce that it will be investigating Taib? Or was MACC arm-twisted to do this? And why when Najib was not in the country?

POSSIBLE ANSWERS:

Scenario 1 - Najib instructed the MACC, and then quickly jumped on a plane and left the mess to sort itself out while he is away.

Scenario 2 - Someone other than Najib, taking the opportunity of Najib’s absence, arm-twisted the MACC to do this. Someone with influence and incredible power whom the MACC fears and listens to? More powerful than Najib?

WHY?

Scenario 1 (A) - Najib is trying to show the country and UMNO that he has the backbone to reform and is transforming his governance policy, and therefore assuage the fears of foreign investors and create more confidence so that the nation’s FDI increases as he goes on a tour to create more business opportunities for the nation. Perhaps a shadow-play, and after FDI’s have poured in, the MACC finds no case and closes the files?

Scenario 1 (B) - At the same time, is Najib subtly sending Taib a message – “Slow down on the corruption, Old Man, because you are making all of us look bad”?

Scenario 1 (C) - Najib could also be sending his own party a subtle message: UMNO is beholden to Taib who saved them with 22 seats, and that without Taib, BN is out of power and therefore if Najib dares to do this to Taib, what more to other members of his party? Is he telling his other UMNO friends and foes to back off and not challenge his presidency so that he won’t put MACC on them too? So Taib becomes the punching-bag for Najib – a good person with bad image for Najib to whack? Taib would, of course play along because not only is he a seasoned politician who is too smart to react but he knows it is all just one big shadow play?

Scenario 1 (D)- Or could it all be just a simple reason – to distract UMNO and the country from his own ineffectiveness, and especially from the current important FT Bill on conversion of minors which is constitutionally questionable?

Now let’s look at the other scenario.

Scenario 2 - If Najib had nothing to do with the moves by MACC against Taib, then who did? Who would have most to gain by having Taib’s balls in his hands? Who is more powerful than Najib to squeeze Taib’s balls and slowly roast them like satay? The answer as to who these hidden hands belong to is not important, but the reason as to why is.

It is no secret that Najib’s back is to the wall, and that his presidency of UMNO might be challenged at the next UMNO Convention. History repeating itself – exit Abdullah, enter Najib, exit Najib enter who? So, the person who wants Najib out would need as much support as possible to successfully oust Najib, correct?

Now Taib holds 22 seats in his hands, and allegedly billions of ringgit. Of course, none of the 22 seats from Sarawak will have any direct bearing on an internal UMNO party election. But, imagine if hundreds of millions were to exchange hands in order for the hidden hands to buy over UMNO warlords loyal to Najib? Do UMNO warlords come cheap? How many millions would it take to grease their hands to hold the daggers that will be plunged into Najib and Rosmah’s backs come the next UMNO Convention? Who would have hundreds of millions at his or her disposal to fund a coup? Who has to pay to stay out of jail?

One fact remains – both Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 have one thing in common – the UMNO party elections coming up at the end of the year. Either Najib is sending a warning to his foes within UMNO to toe his line or someone is pressuring Taib to toe their line and cough up the moolah?

When Najib returns to Malaysia, the press should ask him what the latest developments are on the investigations – how and what he answers will answer our question.

For now, until we hear from Najib’s own mouth, you decide which scenario seems most plausible. What is sure is that there is never a dull moment in Malaysian politics!

In the real world, you'd imagine that rejection by the majority of voters would be a wake-up call to any government. But not, it seems, to Malaysia's BN regime, whose return to business as usual following its recent near-death electoral experience is beyond unbelievable.

As a sports commentator down here in Sydney once made himself famous for saying, this is déjà vu all over again.

Same old slaughter of 'suspects' in police custody, and the same old reluctance to bring the suspects to book. Same old ravishing of the environment and robbery of natural resources by timber tycoons and crony palm-oil plantation companies. Same old immunity for all these and other regime-connected criminals from proper investigation, let alone prosecution. The same old mess of lies, spin and omission from the regime's so-called mainstream media.

And if there's one topic that best illustrates BN's continued criminal career it's the seemingly endless stink surrounding the electoral indelible ink.

Or rather, I should say, the now-infamously delible ink. Which was a joke on the populace from the very start, as it was the only one of eight 'clean and fair election' demands by Bersih that the regime made the slightest effort to meet.

But BN couldn't even play it straight with this single miserable token of its honest intent. First having its crooked election commission claim that the ink would persist for a week, and then, when it proved to wash off in a matter of hours if not minutes, coming up with a series of increasingly stupid excuses.

It's been pretty hard to keep up with them all, but from memory they've included stories that the bottles weren't properly shaken, then that the silver nitrate content had been diluted for fear of causing finger cancer, and finally that the accursed ink had contained no silver nitrate whatever, but just food colouring.

So that at least if it wasn't indelible, the ink was apparently edible. Though many Malaysians still consider the RM7 million cost of the ink and its allegedly 'special' bottles and labels to be absolutely incredible.

Yet the heads of the EC still resolutely refuse to resign in disgrace for this distasteful situation, let alone the other electoral outrages they committed and/or condoned, and the BN regime similarly refuses to remove them.

Puzzled by majority rejection

In light of such evidence of BN's determination to continue in its career of crime and grime, it's amusing, in a gruesome kind of way, that the inventor of '1Malaysia' and now head of 47 percent Malaysia, Najib Abdul Razak, is puzzled by his majority electoral rejection.

So puzzled, in fact, that he says he intends to set up a "political laboratory" to try and analyse the situation he and BN find themselves in and "formulate strategies" for the future.

According to Malaysiakini, Najib announced the formation of thepolitical lab following a meeting of the BN supreme council, explaining that "it is about the future of BN, taking into account the existing political landscape as well as our performance in the last general election."

Adding that the lab would look into various strategies that could be implemented in changing BN, he said that "we will consider whether it requires a structural change, whether it is just branding the BN, or whether it is to be a change in policies or all three of them together as a package."

It would be encouraging to think that this lab might be different from the one that formulated the EC's incredible, edible and above all delible 'indelible' ink. And also a somewhat less sinister lab than the one employed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad back in the 1980s to create the Frankenstein-style monster that BN has since become.

But let's not get our hopes up. Far from any honest research, scientific or otherwise, all that Najib and his fellow BN lab-rats have any intention of doing is perfecting their tried-and-true formula for ruling, robbing and otherwise ruining Malaysia.

Far from working to improve the racial and religious chemistry of the nation, as they so piously claim to intend, all they will do in Najib's so-called lab is to put racial and religious harmony on the back burner in favour of continuing putting the heat on non-Malays through the likes of Perkasa and Utusan Malaysia.

And as for their coming up with a cure for corruption with a genuine Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), or a remedy for the ongoing custodial killing spree in the form of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), forget it.

On the contrary, in fact. They're far more likely to emerge from the lab with new and even cleverer ways to put the acid on the Chinese for allegedly "betraying" them by voting for the opposition in the general election.

Deflecting public criticism

Or new and more devious ways to deflect public criticism of their cronies for causing the so-called 'haze' than Najib's lame claim that nothing could be achieved by blame, and that instead people should pray for rain.

Or to invent a more plausible resolution to the stink about the vastly overpriced edible, delible ink than the recent declaration by Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor that "Malaysia does not need to have indelible ink as part of its electoral process because we are not a Third-World country."

Claiming that use of the ink was only agreed on because "the opposition wanted it", he then went on to declare that the chemical content of the ink had been reduced "because the government cares for the people."

A statement so patently, painfully false as to illustrate the fact that BN and its members and accomplices are way beyond the scope of any ordinary lab, and should by rights be examined by a forensic facility.

Because lying, along with stealing, is in their very DNA. And thus however hard Najib tries to rebrand or reinvent himself and his accomplices, all that's likely to emerge from his so-called political lab is an even more incredible stink.